philh

"if it is possible and the GW admin, let it happen (how is thier competence?) and then they were elected in again while still fighting a war based on a lie (WMD's) that was common knowledge. What does that tell you about the people of the USA that voted for him? " Well here's somehwehre we have common ground. I think the Bush admin did let it happen , not delibaretaley in the way the tin foil hat brigade says. But in the simpler way of them being asleep at the wheel. Read Richard Clarke book "Against All Enemies" and see how indifferent the Bush administration was to the threat of terrorism before 9/11 and how they mistakenly thought there was an Iraqi link to it. Sure thhe Bush administration was incompetent and my opinion of those that elected it is no higher, but that in no way supports a conspiracy theory.

Ocams Razor can be well described as accepting the hypotheiss with the least unproved assumptions. Assumption of the official story: that 19 Islamic funadmentalists were prepared to commit suicide for martydom, that they managed to smuggle some knives onto a plane and some of them took some flying classes so they could steer the planes to their targets. Assumption of the conspiracy theory: That the US government and hundreds , maybe thousands of its employees and associates plotted to kill htousands of its own citizens so that they could pass The Patriot Act or maybe start a war with a country they forgot to include in the plot (remember no Iraqis on the planes?) Not only did they blow the WTC they also faked airliners crashing into the buildings, they shot shot down a passenger airliner and fired missiles at the pentagon (where one of the lead conspirators was actually working ) and no one has blabbed. Not only that the worlds media annd the majority of the acamedic community have assisted in the cover up. You tell me which assumption fits Ocam's Razor.

Try this book, its awesome and I highly reccomend all of the book by Simon Singh. my personal favourite science writer: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Bang-Simon-Singh/dp/0007162200

No I could not find a cause of death, nor could I find the cause of death of my grandmother on google either, neither warrants me to desribe either as mysterious. If you have evidence for foul play present it, but dont just present your ignorance as evidence. Some people know the significance of human chromosone 2 for human evolution, some people dont. I wouldnt describe it as mysterious. Since you are so fond of looking up words in the dictionary, maybe you should look at up the word "context". The tin foil hat brigade dont know how a guy died , they fill the internet with their ignorance, so they type the word mysterios in front of his death and suddenly theyved proved their paranoia. Can you see why we are not buying it?

A lot of people like to exxagerate the exposure on derivtives by quoting the enormous notional value of outstanding contracts. But this is a gross misrepresentation. In a general sense, many derivatives are contracts for difference and so their notional values are never exchanged and hence irrelevant. More specifically take an example of a CDS, suppose bank A buy a CDS form Bank b , they enter into a contract, lets say for $100m. Now lets say that the market moves against bank a and they decided to cut their position. They now sell their CDS, bank B has made a tidy profit. they will generally not unwide the original deal, they will usually put on an offsetting deal so that the net exposure of the two deals is zero. But in doing so the volume of outstanding deals between the two has doubled even the exposure for both has fallen to zero. In other words measuring total volume does not account for offsetting deals and netting of exposures. Take the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the collapse of that bank led to a $400 bln pay out form CDs, but after netting the total amoutn that changed hands was only $7.2 bln Thats another reaosn why one should never pay attention to the outstanding notional size of contracts when discussing derivatives. Its a meaningless number often used to scare people.

Physicists are considering reworking our theories of gravity so that they dony need to invoke dark matter. You should look up scalar tensor vector gravity . The problem is these alternative theories have to prove themselves before one cannot do away with dark matter as the explantion for the rotation of galaxies. You do physics a disservice to think they are so naieve as to have not thought of this .

What do you mean the cause of death was undisclosed? Do you mean the conspioracy web sites havent disclosed it? in which case, so what,? maybe the real cause of death is something natural and so doesnt support their case? Perhpas thats why he was int he hospital when he died. Do you have any actual evidence that there's anything suspicious about this death other than the fact the conspiracy nuts put the word "mysterious" in front of it?

You say Barry Jennins deis of mysterious circumstances, do you have any evidence for this or is that in a hanger in New Mexico too?

Again the NIST article is not saying theer was no explosion, you arguing against a straw man . It was saying there were no explosions consistent with the destruction of the building by explosvies, a key difference you fail to notice. The first peer reviewed article you present is no such thing, its a letter , that does not count mate sorry. The second is even worse , its a statement of the goals of the tin foil briggade, where was it published? In a journal published by the very author of the article, a guy who also happens to beleive Jesus visitied America. Ok I know thats an ad hom but I couldnt help it. The fact reamins is that none of this qualifies as real research in a serious journal. Not a suprise given his repteated use of ideas that are so easily debunked. For example, he notices that put options were bought on airline stocks shortly before 911. This is true but what does he fail to mention? he fails to mention the investor who bought the puts on Americna and United also bought the underlying shares to keep his trade delta neutral . If he's delta hedged his trade then the conspiracy theory is blown out of the water . Yet your man doesn't want to mention this. The fact also reamins you havent answered one of my questions. Why didnt they put an Iraqi on the planes? Why risking expsorue by blowing up WTC 7? How is that so many experts agree: the nist, the firemen, the BBC's investigation , the American Society for Civil Engineers, are they all in on the conspriacy as well?

Alas you tube is blocked at my office and so i cant watch your movie file. If you actually read the quote from the NISt they specify the volume of the exlposive sound 130-140 decibles half a mile away. I doubt your you tube videos will ble able to answer that question. They do not state that no explosions occured. Of course a huge building on fire can cause explosions, that does nto mean they were destroyed by explosives. I note you dont want to answer any of my questions. Nor will you show me a single peer reviewed article in serious academic journal that backs your paranoid claims, despite insiting on focusing on the science. Instead you want to wait til "the truth" comes out on you predicted date of 9/11 09. Well thats only a few months away, will you come back to this forum and admit you were wrong if this doesn't happen? Maybe we can all cheer that the tinfoil hat brigade have been somewhat deflated by gool old fashioned critical thinking: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-06-04.html#feature

"So to make the physics work, we must hypothesize 96% of the universe which we cannot detect but is the only explanation that fits our dogma. " I don't understand how you can use the phrase Big Bang and dogma in the same sentence. The big bang is accepted for the overwhelming evidence in favour of it . It makes testabel predicitons which have been verfified by subsequent data. The fact that we can't comprehend what the matter in the Universe is made of does not invalidate the big bang. Creationsism does not make simialr testab/falsifiable predicitons. Moreover scientists are ready to abandon any well cherished theories if they fit the data better. There are many propsed modifcaiton of our understanding of gravity including : Scala tensor Vector gravity ad Modified Newtonian dynamcis. If the evidence becomes compelling for anyone of these then text books will be rewritten, but not before. That's good science , not dogma.

Here's another question for you. Suppose there was a conspiracy. Presumably the guys planting the explosvies dont want to get caught. The more buildings they try to blow up , the more likely they are to get caught. Why blow up WTC 7? dont you think the two towers would have been enough for them? They would have to be sure that sufficient debris would fall on WTC 7, why risk it? Did the conspiractors also pay off the BBC , the NIST , the American Society for Civil engineers and the NYC fire department? All of whom back the official explanation.Since you are so keen on what the NIST has to say , how do you respond to their report which states: "The team said that the smallest blast event capable of crippling the critical column would have produced a “sound level of 130 to 140 decibels at a distance of half a mile,” yet no noise this loud was reported by witnesses or recorded on videos. "

"I am not going to get into nitty gritties of theories, but to answer your question, I can't say for sure the Bush administration wass behind the collapses, maybe though you should ask why the chose people that are still alive as the people they claim to have hijacked the planes? " Perhpas what you mean is you have no answer to my question but that doesnt matter as you are married to your conclusion.? You say the hijackers are still alive, is it possible that persons of the same name are still allive instead? Look in the phone book of any country you will see several people of the same name. For example, in the film Loose Change they claim Said al Ghamdi and walid al Shari were still alive. Der speigl investigated this claim and found it to be a case of mistaken identity, the hujackers were very much dead. a quick lok at wikipedia might help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_al-Ghamdi I read the letter you posted by the FBI , if thats what you think is good evidence you are really clutching at straws. Nowhere in the letter do they endorse a single conspiracy claim. You say you want to keep the discussion scientific , ok so show me some respectable peer reviewed journals that back the views of conspiracy theoriests.

...and the discovery institute got over 500 scientists and engineers to sign a petition aginst evolution. It doesn'mean anything becuase real science isnt done via petitions. I have one question for 911 "truthers" ; if the Bush government was behind 9/11 why didnt they put some Iraqis on the planes?

You dont think huge profits avilable in an illegal industry might make them more likely to behave in a criminal way?

Why would anyone imagine that drug prohibition would have any different outcome to alcohol prohibition?

Perhaps its not clear which is likely to give a better return on ones investment. $1 trillion on the US economy or between $650blm- $3trln on the Iraq war (depedning on which estimate you read). Persoanlly if it were my money Id go with the US economy, but thats just me. By the way you you are claiming a combined Iraq and Afghan populaiton "freed" but are you also using combined estimated budget ? I dont think so. Also if the US government buys a toxic asset eg a securitised debt obligation backed by domestic mortgages, the money is not neccesarily gone. Thats only true if all the assets behind the security are worth 0.

It's likely that your numbers are an under estimate because there are many knock on costs of the war that your number does not include. Estimates of the these numbers are not easy, but some are are as high as several trillion dollars. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7304300.stm http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece If they are correct it should come as no suprise that the US economy has taken such a dive. Nor is it clear that Iraqi people are now "free". Sure the official government is elected and a model of freedom compared to Saddam. But does the government really rule Iraq or is the militia? The militia are not so toelrant and its not therefore clear that the Iraqi people are free. I have just read the London times reporter form Iraq's new book detailing life there. Many people fear for their lives from religious militia who have even killed vegetable sellers for arranging their products in a sexually provocative way. Certianly the situation has improved but to say there is freedom in Iraq is premature. Lets see what happens when US troops pull out, will a model Western democracy survive or will we have replaced a brutal dictator with lots of brutal militia?

No I dont see any mis representation here at all, what are you on about? Are you suggetsing the Australian government Bureau of Statistics is faking their CPI data? No one is claiming that 3.7% cpi is not a positive number, but a move from 5% to 3.7% is a welcome deveolpment. As for the New Zeland data , again no one is suggesting that this currency has not experinced positive inflation over its lifespan, why is this relevant? Currencies fluctuate in response to new information, not old information.

Vague predictions aren't very useful. To say that a currency is losing value is meanignless unless you specify what it is losing value against. Genrally one might consider its value aginats another currency or against goods and services , the latter can be measured by increasing rates of inflation. Inflation in Australia appears to be on the way down: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Inflation-CPI.aspx?Symbol=AUD and in New Zeland the Cpi turned negative: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/new-zealands-quarterly-inflation-rate/story.aspx?guid=%7BBFF98BAF-0064-49EA-BB3C-1DC103BDC46C%7D&siteid=rss

Ive already used air to air radios and they are awesome. However good a coaches gestures are, they are never as good as a human voice. Ive found I can hear them most of time inside the tunnel and not just when the wind is turned down. The onlly reaosn I ask I may be doing some travelling round the world and would like to drop by some tunnels that use in air coms, Im amazed at how few people have adopted this excellent technology.

Estimates of the Iraqi death count is between 654,965 (2006 Lancet Survey) and 1,220580 (2007 ORB survey). To be fair this doesnt mean the Us caused these deaths. Most of them were due to the Sunni and Shia killing each other, not the US killing Iraqis. However by invading and then failing to police the situation the Us must shoulder some (but not all) of the blame for this . No Wmd's were ever found so we must conclude the original rational for the war was wrong. A dictatorship was replaced by a democaracy so thats a plus. But not as much as it might seem. The increase in religious tyranny by non government forces eg militia , meanns that this democracy is not as free as one might hope. The financial cost fo the war officialy was just under $1 trillion , but the cost in terms of secondary effects has been estimated as a high a $3trillion. Would tthe current fincial crises be so bad if there was a few extra trillion dollars in the economy that wasnt burnt in the deserts of the Middle East? My conclusion is the same as the preivous poster , it was a waste of time, life and money . But I would also add political captial. After 9/11 Us flags flew everywhere, there was a lot fo sympathy that Us that could have built on to isolate AQ. That was all desroyed after Iraq and then some .

I a currency trader, but I don't have easy news for you. Unfortunetly currencies and other financail commodities are best modelled by following a random walk. That means it's new information that changes the price, as we don't have new information, by definition we can't tell you where these currencies wil be in 1 month from now. However there is a fwd market for all these currencies , they are not predicitons by the market of the future spot rate. Instead they are calculated from the relative interest rates between the two currencies. What's interesting is that studies show fwd prices are the best unbiased predictor of future spot prices. The currenct prices are: us$/Aud$ spot 1.4447 1m fwd 1.4484 3m fwd 1.4530 us$/NZ$ spot 1.7803 1m fwd 1.7846 3m fwd 1.78845

Anyone knwo which tunnels around the world have coaches with air to air radios? If you have them at your tunnel, please post here

I went with Exodus traveland had a great time. Just make sure you have a walking stick, there are some very steep steps and no rails. Enjoy